PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2020
My thesis challenges the way that disengagement and engagement have been thought about and defined in the formal learning context of schools.
Traditionally schools have been considered as stable, closed environments where engagement in learning can be measured through the individual behaviour, achievement and attitude of students. I argue that we should approach the study of disengagement, not as a stable, psychological characteristic of individual students but rather as a phenomenon created through the relationships between students, teachers, objects, technology and the environment.
This relational approach enables us to look beyond the usual distinctions between in-school and out-of-school practices to incorporate digital gaming as a critical tool to help re-evaluate formal learning environments. By comparing how engagement emerges differently from gaming and formal learning practices, I have illuminated the ways in which certain practices and ways of valuing engagement have become prevalent and embedded in school practices, increasing the likelihood of boredom and ultimately, disengagement.
In two periods of field work during June/July 2016 and Feb – Nov 2017 in secondary schools in Yorkshire, I used ethnographic methods such as interviews, observations, photographs, video and audio recordings and field notes to generate evidence of students’ differing experiences in digital games to create new understandings of engagement and disengagement in the classroom.
The thesis makes an original contribution to scholarship by taking a social and material approach to boredom and engagement rather than regarding it as an individual psychological state. By using engagement in digital gaming practices as a critical tool, I have highlighted limitations in thinking about educational practice and how engaging and effective student learning experiences are created. Finally I have suggested that rather than aiming for predictability and standardisation in teaching practices teachers should recognise the unique elements and characteristics of each learning situation and develop practices based on their own dynamic judgement rather than in response to policy or the purely practical demands of assessment.
This new approach to boredom and disengagement, which compares formal learning activities to those in informal digital gaming, gives teachers, governors and senior management potential to intervene in the organisation of time and space in schools, to adopt a more flexible view of engagement in learning and provide a wider range of opportunities to demonstrate both engagement and learning.
Learning in the Digital Age 